Contents

Chapelry History

Little Marsden was created as a chapel of ease in 1783 from, and lying within the boundaries of Whalley, Lancashire Ancient Parish.

The Diocese of Blackburn is a Church of England diocese, covering much of Lancashire, created in 1926 from part of the Diocese of Manchester. The Diocese includes the towns of Blackburn, Blackpool, Burnley, and the cities of Lancaster, and Preston, as well as a large part of the Ribble Valley.

The town was originally two villages, Little Marsden and Great Marsden. A small mill had been established by the Ecroyd family at Edge End as early as 1740, and there were two coal mines nearby, but it was the coming of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal in 1796, followed by the East Lancashire Railway in 1849, that spurred its development as an industrial town, with an economy based mainly upon cotton weaving.

"MARSDEN, LITTLE,a chapelry [built in 1813],in the parochial chapelry of Colne, parish of Whalley, union of Burnley, Higher division of the hundred of Blackburn, N. division of Lancashire, 3 miles (north by northeast from Burnley."[1]

Resources

Civil Registration

Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. There are several Internet sites with name lists or indexes. A popular site is FreeBMD.

Lancashire Online Parish Clerks

Church records

Include here information for parish registers, Bishop’s Transcripts and other types of church records, such as parish chest records. Add the contact information for the office holding the original records. Add links to the Family History Library Catalog showing the film numbers in their collection

Census records

Census records from 1841 to 1911 are available online. For access, see England Census Records and Indexes Online. Census records from 1841 to 1891 are also available on film through a Family History Center or at the Family History Library. The first film number is 306898.

Poor Law Unions

Probate records

Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Lancashire Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

Maps and Gazetteers

Maps are a visual look at the locations in England. Gazetteers contain brief summaries about a place.